


The Mask You Wear

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: 19th century france but in space, Alex asked why we even have this lever, Love Triangle, Multi, also there's murder in here, also yep., am I also trash for musicals?, am I trash for doctor who?, here we are, in the true phantom of the opera way, the master causes problems on purpose, yep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: “By who?” All pretense of normality has fallen away, leaving only snapping questions and quiet fire as her mind races through the possibilities. Had the TARDIS been sabotaged? It can’t have been, she knows where all of the keys to the ship are and have been, which hands they’ve passed through, which ones had been destroyed along the way. Unless, of course, one hasn’t been lost yet, but she’s always so careful that it seems unlikely.“The opera house’s resident phantom, it would seem. This was left for you, along with a time and date I was to deliver it,” he says all too cordially, holding the sealed note out to her.“Hold up -- phantom? Doc, you couldn’t’ve broken down somewhere without ghosts, could you?”Following the events of Orphan 55, the Doctor and her fam find themselves stranded in what seems like the 19th century, where they are taunted by a mysterious opera ghost who seems to have already known that they would be dropping by.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 23
Kudos: 82





	1. Chapter 1

“Hit the floor!” The Doctor shouts as she clings to the side of the console, stance wide and knees bent as the TARDIS bucks and lurches. Smoke seems to ooze from every gap in the room, slipping around lights and sneaking past buttons and switches as it gathers in ominous, noxious clouds. Fighting to keep her balance, she stretches, reaching out a hand and sweeping it through the tainted air before touching a finger to the tip of her tongue. Her nose scrunches as grease and sulfur and the faintest tinge of death sink into her tastebuds. She doesn’t know how to diagnose that particular problem, doesn’t know which wires to reconnect or which switches to toggle to undo whatever’s sent the ship into crisis mode. 

Coughing fills the air as Yaz struggles to cross the control room, moving hand over hand against the walls and falling from column to column until she, too, is desperately clinging to the console. “What’s happening?” she asks, voice hoarse. “Can I help?”   
  
Under different circumstances, the Doctor might have been impressed, but there is always something about an out-of-control TARDIS that shakes her to her very core. It makes solutions hard to come by, and almost -- almost -- makes her improvisational approach to life untenable. “What part of hit the floor was so confusing? Get down. The boys did it.” A slight tilt of her head points in their direction, even as her eyes remain fixed on the controls beneath her, jumping from point to point as she fights to find the problem.    
  
Graham’s voice rises from somewhere across the room. Needlessly proud of himself, given how desperate the current situation has become. “That’s right, we did.” 

“Shut up, grandad.” Ryan’s eyeroll is practically audible.    
  
“Just because you --” Graham starts to argue, but the Doctor cuts him off before he has a chance to make his point.    
  
“Stop talking, all of you.” There’s a pause filled only by the groaning screams of the engines and the frantic four-beat rushing of twin pulses before she tacks on a gentle, “Please.” Can’t look like she’s losing face now, not went she’s spent so long constructing this huge, magnanimous persona. Not when the trust between them has already been stretched towards its breaking point. A couple wrong words, and they’ll leave her behind. She knows they will. 

Another lurch heaves the ground beneath their feet, and the Doctor takes advantage of the moment of disorientation to sweep Yaz’s feet out from under her, sending her to the ground. Better bruised than dead by smoke inhalation. Not a good way to go, especially when there’s a fair chance that it could be toxic. She hopes it’s not. The last thing she needs is to be trapped on a dead spaceship with three dying friends for the fourth time in recent memory. It’s never a fun time. Unless one of those dying friends is Pablo Picasso. The art he made after that brush with death was positively exquisite. It inspired some of his best work, if she does say so herself. 

The air grows a bit thicker, smoke creeping ever closer to the floor until even the Doctor’s caught in a coughing fit, fighting a losing battle to clear out her lungs. “Why now? Why are you doing this to me  _ now _ ?” She appeals to the ship as a whole before it falls once again with a shocking jerk. “That’s it. Gonna give you space to sort it out.” Fingers dance across the controls, frantically trying to key onto something -- anything -- stable before she throws her entire weight against the stubborn heft of a lever.    
  
The brakes don’t even bother fighting the materialization. There’s only a decisive ding to mark the landing, slightly muffled by the increasing density of the smoke.    
  
“Out, you lot! Everybody out!”    
  
Hands roll over hands and feet stumble over feet as all four of them scramble towards the doors. The Doctor is the last to leave, turning so that she might offer her TARDIS one last long look, just in case there’s something obvious that she’s missed. It is only when the walls start shaking that she finally takes several quick steps backward, pulling the doors shut behind her and craning her neck to squint up at the roof. Curse the height that she lost in her most recent regeneration. She should start carrying a stepladder.

Without coordinates or permission, the TARDIS begins to step out of this time again, fading in and out as it begins to take off. “No!” she can’t seem to stop herself from panicking, taking a single, desperate step forward. “No, no, no, no.” But with every no, the ship ignores her, pulling away bit by bit until they are completely stranded.    
  
Chest heaving with short, panicked breaths, the Doctor stares at the empty space where it had been, hesitant to turn around and face her friends. Their trust in her has already been fractured; she doesn’t want to have to explain that they might be trapped her for a bit longer than they would like, and that their fate depends on when a spaceship with a consciousness decides to wander back here … or how long it takes for her to improvise something a bit quicker. If she’s even capable of such a thing. 

“Doctor --”    
  
“Not now, Ryan.” She waves the interruption away with one hand, still staring blankly at the wall. 

“Not me, thanks.” Ryan says, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket and taking an annoyed step away from the rest of the group. 

Eyes narrow as she pivots, blonde hair flying. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone might have seen all of this, that they could have very well landed in a busy subway station or the middle of a reality TV show taping in the 31st century. Frantic gaze sweeps over their surroundings -- taking in a pair of grand staircases, impeccably polished marble, statues huddled in alcoves, and sparkling chandeliers casting light into even the furthest corner of the room -- before coming to settle on the stranger who had spoken her name.    
  
He’s tall, tan-skinned, and bearded, with honey colored eyes that are too earnest for the heartbreak and panic that threaten to drown her. He’s dressed almost entirely black, cut for Europe in the late 19th century, and there’s a sealed letter held delicately between his first two fingers, and so far as she knows, she has never laid eyes upon him before.    
  
The Time Lord does her best to pitch her voice upwards, but the fear and uncertainty is still evident in the intensity of her stare and the suspicious set of her brows. “Sorry, have we met? Don’t always get things in the right order, see. Makes it a bit hard to keep up with names and faces.”   
  
A light laugh traces his lips and creases the corners of his eyes. “No. I was told you’d drop by.”   
  
“By who?” All pretense of normality has fallen away, leaving only snapping questions and quiet fire as her mind races through the possibilities. Had the TARDIS been sabotaged? It can’t have been, she knows where all of the keys to the ship are and have been, which hands they’ve passed through, which ones had been destroyed along the way. Unless, of course, one hasn’t been lost yet, but she’s always so careful that it seems unlikely. She reaches into her pocket, feeling around for the cool familiar metal. That one is accounted for, and Yaz has been allowed to keep one as an apology, but the Doctor doesn’t dare ask if she has it on her now. Not when the situation is enormously delicate, and not when there are witnesses to her potential failures.    
  
“The opera house’s resident phantom, it would seem. This was left for you, along with a time and date I was to deliver it,” he says, still all too cordially, holding the sealed note out to her. 

Graham takes a step forward as the Doctor snatches the paper from the stranger’s hands, lifting the seal with the underside of a single fingernail. “Hold up --  _ phantom _ ? Doc, you couldn’t’ve broken down somewhere without ghosts, could you?” 

“Picked the nearest point. Didn’t have much choice in the matter. Things were kinda on fire, if you hadn’t noticed,” she grumbles, lip lifting in a slight sneer as she unfolds the letter. Concern creases her forehead as her eyes quickly scan the lines of tightly bound script. It doesn’t take her long to read it, and she moves even more quickly as she shoves it into an already overstuffed pocket of her coat. “Come on, fam. We’re leaving.”   
  
“How?” Ryan asks, reclaiming the distance that he had put between them mere moments before. “The TARDIS left, it’s not like we can just hop back to where we came from, is it?”   
  
“I don’t know. We just need to be anywhere but here,” The Doctor repeats firmly, taking two confident steps backward towards the doors that separate this place from the outside world.    
  
Yaz grabs the Doctor’s wrist and snatches the crumpled paper from the pocket. Her temper has grown shorter and shorter as she’s watched more people die, more planets fall to time, more and more of the Doctor’s lies put people in harm’s way. “You can’t keep not telling us stuff. We’re your friends. We’re in this pickle same as you, and we have a right to know. Tell us what’s going on, or we’re not going anywhere.”   
  
“Yasmin Khan.” The name bristles with barely kept irritation as the Doctor holds out free hand, gesturing for the return of the letter.    
  
The set of Yaz’s mouth tightens, and she’s saved by having to make a decision by Graham, who plucks the paper out of her hands with great aplomb. “I’ll read it.” He clears his throat, and begins, “My dearest Doctor --”   
  
A sudden compression of air sends them staggering to the floor, breaking Yaz’s grip on the Doctor’s wrist and cutting off the meat of the letter before it had even begun. The very air seems to ring once the moment passes, and a trail of blood trickles out of one of Ryan’s ears, dripping onto the collar of his shirt. It takes a long moment of stunned, confused silence for them to realize that Graham has vanished from the room, replaced only by a collection of rose petals that float delicately towards the floor, eventually alighting onto the crumpled letter that had been left behind.    
  
“I think …” the stranger who had greeted them rises slowly to his feet, brushing imagined dust from his sleeves and the knees of his trousers, “That our little ghost would appreciate it if you stayed.”


	2. Chapter 2

There's a couple quick words and a rustle of movement before the Doctor vanishes off around a corner with the dapper stranger in tow. She doesn't offer any reassurance, or even as much as a casual 'see you later' to Ryan and Yaz before she goes, which has been pretty consistent with her general behavior lately. Before the incident with the Kasaavin and the Master, it had seemed like she went out of her way to make sure that they felt included in their little adventures, assigning them all tasks and hyping them up like she was a coach getting them ready for the big game, but lately, they're lucky if she bothers to clue them in at all.

Yaz stares at the corner around which the Doctor's coattails at vanished, tongue pressing her irritation against the back of her teeth. "Do you think she knows she left us here?" she asks after a lengthy pause, turning to Ryan with concern written across her forehead. 

Ryan shoves his hands in his pockets with a shrug. "Dunno." He drags the tip of his shoe against floor, drawing an ear-piercing shriek from the marble. 

" _ Ryan _ !"

"Sorry. Didn't think." He rocks back on his heels, eyes fixed on the rose petals that still linger in the place where Graham had been standing just a moment ago. There's something about going on these adventures with a family member that feels different than running around with his mates. Family comes with responsibility, a promise to love and protect, and no matter what he does, he can't seem to keep these sorts of things from happening. Of course, the Doctor always steps in in the end, but what if one day they're going up against something strong than her? 

The Doctor had almost cast his dad into a black hole just to get rid of a single Dalek. It's hard to see the best in someone after that. For all he knows, this could have been the last time he'll ever see Graham.

With a huff, he rolls his shoulders back and stares up at the elaborate ceiling, trying to fight back tears. He's not going to cry. Not while there's still hope.

"Hey," Yaz says gently, taking a step forward and bumping her shoulder against his. "He'll be fine. You know that, right? The Doctor's on it." Her lips draw back in a small smile as she tilts her head, dark hair trailing over the collar of her jacket. "You want to walk around at all? Place seems pretty cool, even if it is haunted."

"Yeah, sure." Ryan can't bring himself to meet her eyes or his smile, but he does pick a random direction and set off, eyes peeled for anything out-of-the-ordinary. If the Doctor can't save Graham, he will. "Where do you think we are, anyway?"

Yaz screws up her face in thought as she pivots, looking around at the sculptures that line the room. "Paris? It all feels a bit French, doesn't it? Course, it could be Space France or something."

"Space France?" Not even the thought of Graham's vanishment can keep the smile from creeping across his face. 

"Y'know, people are building replicas of Greek and Roman stuff all the time. Wouldn't be ridiculous if the space elite decided to rebuild 19th century France for grand parties or the 'integrity of the arts' or something." 

"You do realize that we're proper screwed if a burning TARDIS dropped us in space France, right?" Ryan observes as they step up to a grand set of closed doors, embossed with gold and twisting cupids. Gently, he pushes them open, stepping into the dimly lit theatre with Yaz close behind him. 

A quiet "Whoa," slips out of Yaz's lips before she can stop it. 

Rows of seats, each covered in pristine red velvet stretch out before them, paving the way to a stage so ornate that it almost doesn't seem real. The set upon it alone is impressive -- she almost believes that someone's gutted a church and placed it here -- but the stage itself is gilded in shining metal, elegant filigree curves about the corners, and carved cupids that almost appear to have been frozen in time hold back the curtains. 

She cranes her neck to look up at the ceiling high above them. Crystals on unlit chandeliers reflect back what little light they can, like enormous clusters of distant stars. One of those things could do a lot of damage if it happened to fall. 

"Space France?" Ryan echoes again, too stunned to string together anything more coherent. 

"Definitely Space France," she confirms as she takes a couple forward, trailing her fingers over the edge of one of the seats. It almost feels wrong to sit in it, like she's going to ruin something by doing so, but she plops down anyway. It's already been a long day and it's barely gotten started. Might as well get a bit of rest while they can. 

She swings her legs up onto the back of the chair in front of her and pats the seat next to her, imploring Ryan to join her. "Come on then. Sit down."

"Shouldn't we be doing something?" 

"Nothing we can do, really. It's not like the Doctor bothered to tell us anything. We don't even know where she went, aside from not here." Her hands settle on her abdomen as she stares up at the distant ceiling. "Besides, I don't want to risk messing anything up. One of us missing is bad enough, but all three of us? With the Doctor as on edge as she's been for the past few weeks? We'd probably never make it out."

Ryan nods. He has to admit that Yaz has a point, and no matter how much he might be itching to do something, it'd be all too easy to end up doing more harm than good. He, too, leans back in the chair, staring up at the scattered pinpricks of light. A question nags at his tongue. "Did you get a good look at the letter?"

Yaz shakes her head. "Nah. Graham took it from me, and then the Doctor swept it up before I had a chance to grab it again." She would've liked to have a good long look at the signature, at least. Anyone who's addressing the Doctor as 'dearest' deserves a healthy amount of suspicion, especially if they're snatching up her friends. 

"Who do you reckon sent it?"

"The guy in the hat did say they have a ghost"

"The Doctor wouldn't be that spooked by a ghost, I don't think. Gotta be something else. Something personal, maybe. You like her. I mean, you  _ like her, like her _ . Has she ever told you anything about something like that?" 

Yaz bolts upright, feet hitting the floor with enough force to make Ryan jump. "What do you mean I  _ like her, like her _ ?" Whatever complacency she had entertained mere moments ago has complete dissipated, replaced by the sheer overwhelming panic of sudden vulnerability. 

He feels like he's back in school, somehow caught in between two people he should've known better than to mess around with. Both hands find his face as he sinks a little bit deeper into the chair, striving to become one with the floor. "Y'know. Got a crush and all that," he clarifies in a quiet mumble. 

Outside of a professional context, Yaz has never really considered herself particularly defensive. She has always been open enough with her friends and family, and she gets close to people easily, however, she can feel herself building an emotional barricade between the two of them right now, cutting Ryan off from whatever had leaked through her cracks.

"I don't think you can love someone you know nothing about," she says after a painfully long pause. It's a brave declaration for someone who has been known to catch feelings for people that she's never even spoken to, nonetheless travelled alongside. 

"She's told us stuff."

"About other people. Not about her."

"She said she's a Time Lord or whatever."

A puff of air fills Yaz's cheeks as she searches for excuses. "The 'or whatever' is the problem, Ryan. None of us know what a Time Lord is, or what it means to her. She's hanging out with us and not her own people, does that not ring alarm bells for you?"

"Maybe they get boring. You do fancy her though. I've seen the way you look at her. It's like she's the sun or something."

A rush of light saves Yaz from having to create plausible deniability. She twists in her seat as the doors through which they had entered swing open, and a girl works her way down the aisles. The girl doesn't look older than sixteen, and there's something unnatural in her movements that reminds Yaz of robots. Something is slightly out of sync, and that gap between illusion and reality is deeply unsettling.

The girl pauses in front of them, looking down at the parcel and letters clutched in her hands as if to check the addressee before asking, "Pardon me, are you Yasmin Khan and Ryan Sinclair?"

Yaz swings her feet down and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and staring intently up at the stranger. She tries to put on a smile and pretend that she is unbothered by the weird, inhuman lag. "Yeah, what about it?"

"The letter is for you. The parcel is for the Doctor, but I've been told that you can hold it for her until she gets back."

Ryan pulls himself far enough out of the hole that he had dug for himself to eye the letter with a certain amount of skepticism. "We aren't going to explode if we read that, yeah? Because we've already had one person disappear today after reading one of those."

A mechanical tinkle of laughter flutters and then falls silent. "No. It's just a letter. It was left for you at the manager's office."

"By who?" Yaz says, keeping her focus trained on the girl's face. 

"Was it the ghost fella?" Ryan follows up Yaz's question with one of his own. 

"I don't know. You'll have to read it, but the Phantom often leaves messages in our inbox. He is very demanding sometimes."

"Demanding?' One of Yaz's eyebrows draws upward.

"Oh yes. He likes things done a certain way, you see. He's very particular about staging and artistry, and if his demands are not met, he often exacts revenge."

"Revenge? Like disappearing people?" Ryan asks quickly. Maybe they could get to the bottom of this without the Doctor after all.

Another haunting tinkle of laughter precedes her answer. "No. He prefers murder. It's all a bit horrible, actually."

Ryan's heart sinks as he leans forward, hand wrapping so tightly around the arm of his chair that his knuckles pale. He can't imagine what horrible things might be happening to Graham right now if he has happened to fall into the hands of a murderous operatic phantom. Nothing good could possibly come out of a situation like that. 

Yaz stands, reaching out a hand and beckoning for the letter. "Give it to me. I'll open it." 

A well-oiled, robotic arm places the letter in Yaz's hand, and she takes a few steps further down the row. She doesn't want him to get caught in the crossfire if the letter does happen to be a trap. Brown eyes scan the tight cursive before she recites: 

_ Dear Yaz and Ryan,  _

_ I have left three tickets for the night's performance at will call. Do try to be prompt. The Opera does not look kindly upon stragglers.  _

_ Yours,  _

_ The Phantom _

_ P.S. Do make sure that the Doctor opens my gift.  _

A long pause stretches between them before Ryan dares to break the silence. "How full of yourself do you have to be to call yourself 'The Phantom'?"

“Maybe it’s a Time Lord thing, titles. After all, the Doctor is the Doctor, and O called himself the Master. The Phantom fits right in, if you think about it.” Thoughtfully, Yaz runs a finger over the ink. It feels a bit wrong, and she wonders whether that’s a side effect of foreign technology retrofitted into old customs or the TARDIS translator going a bit off-kilter now that the ship is no longer here. 

Curious, she looks back up at the girl, crossing the space between them and peering at the label on the parcel. It looks almost runic -- all straight lines and strange symbols. She can’t read it, but she does pick up on a couple of oddly placed Greek letters hidden amongst the bunch.  She starts to wrap her mind around a question, but before she has the opportunity to ask, the doors fly open again.    
  
The Doctor enters the room like a force of nature. Straight-backed and loud and obviously hiding her discomfort behind bumbling bombast. “Oi, you lot -- I was looking for you. Well, not really looking. Got a bit distracted and things went sideways, but I found you in the end, and that’s what matters.” She slides into their circle and smiles at the strange girl, “Hi! I’m the Doctor. Who’re you?”   
  
“Meg,” the girl answers. She does not shake the Time Lord’s hand, choosing instead to hold out the parcel. “This was left for you.”

Wrath flickers across the Doctor’s face. It’s there and gone so quickly that Yaz might have missed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. She cannot help but wonder how many of the Doctor’s thoughts go unspoken; how often fear and rage and worry get shoved aside in favor of chatting about playing cricket with Galileo or losing a game of backgammon to Jules Verne. There’s a certain amount of dread to be found in learning that you don’t really know someone as well as you thought you had, especially when you’ve already developed feelings for them. For all she knows, she’s fallen in love with someone who’s never had their best interests at heart, and the very thought is terrifying. She hates herself for thinking it, and she resents the Doctor for behaving in a way that has forced her to question everything. 

“Brilliant! I don't want it,” the Doctor says, taking the package and tossing it dismissively into an unoccupied seat before sinking haphazardly into another. 

“I’ll … go then,” Meg says with a great deal of uncertainty before turning and walking out of the room, leaving the trio alone. 

“Are you not going to open it?” Ryan asks, gesturing towards the package.    
  
Coattails sweep across velvet as the Doctor adjusts her posture, fighting to find comfort while still being able to hold a halfway decent conversation. “ _ Nah _ ,” she leans into the word too hard to play the answer off casually, nose scrunching in frustration at both herself and at the situation that they’ve found themselves in.

"It's got weird writing on the label,” Yaz says. This isn’t the first time the Doctor hasn’t been forthcoming with important information, and she’s not afraid to push a little bit harder in order to get a satisfactory answer. She’d always been good at this bit of interrogations in her trainings, even if she’s never been given a chance to use those skills in the field. “It looks runic or something. I thought the TARDIS was supposed to translate every known language in the universe. Why can't we read that?”

Blonde hair traces the angles of the Doctor’s face as she glances down at the discarded package, slightly luminous in the ambient light. “It's Old High Gallifreyan. It fell out of normal use well before TARDISes came into fashion, so nobody bothered to program it in. Plus, it’s a bit dangerous in the wrong hands. Most archaic languages are. You can dethrone a god if you know the right set of words.”

Yaz leans forward, bright eyes fixed on the Doctor’s face with excitement. “Can you read it?”

A slight frown digs into the Time Lord’s face as she glances back up. “Course I can read it.”

“What's it say?”

A sigh eases past the Doctor’s parted lips as she looks towards the distant ceiling. “Not important.” 

Yaz bristles. Every time she thinks that she’s getting close, every time the Doctor opens up and offers up a tiny bit of information, the walls always come back up, shutting her out. It’s infuriating, and she doesn’t know how the Doctor expects them to keep trusting her if she doesn’t trust them back. She musters her courage, about to say something to that very effect when Ryan cuts her off. 

“We got a letter. Said we were supposed to make sure that you opened it.”

The Doctor glances at him, brows contracting in the center of her forehead. “Did he threaten you?”   
  
“No? The Phantom said it left us tickets at the office or something, that we shouldn’t be late, and that you should open the package. Nothing too bad. Why?”

Resolve tightens the Doctor’s lips as she runs a hand through her hair, pushing it out of her face. “Then I’m not going to open it. No consequences, nothing to gain.” There’s a heavy silence as her eyes fix upon the parcel again, but she quickly springs back to her feet, digging into her pockets and holding out a tiny tin toy. “Oh, forgot to mention, I found this!"

Disappointment flickers across Yaz’s face, but she leans in anyway, feigning interest. "What is it?" 

"It's a little monkey. You wind him up and he bangs on the cymbals. A classic, really. Never see them around in your time."

"But what's it do, is it a tracking device or something?" Ryan asks, confused. 

"Nope, it’s just a monkey."

"You ran off to find a monkey?" 

"Well, I was getting to know some of the boys in the shop and got a bit distracted. You have no idea how much work goes into this place. I mean really, reconstructing an entire opera house on another planet? There’s so much maintenance. Plus,” she says, tilting her head in smug satisfaction, “I learned that there’s an entire system of tunnels underneath the building. The boys use a bit of it to store things and for shortcuts, but most of it’s been unused ever since the Phantom took up residence.”   
  
“Do you think Graham might be down there?” Hope shines in Ryan’s eyes as he rises to his feet, ready to go anywhere or do anything if it means that he might be able to track down his granddad.    
  
“Maybe. What do you say, want to have a look?”


	3. Chapter 3

Moisture clings to the walls of the tunnels. In areas, it gathers and runs in rivulets down the stonework. Tiny waterfalls eating away at the surface, completely ignorant of the fact that too much erosion will collapse the entire structure at some unknown point in the future. The Doctor loves and hates how temporary man-made monuments are. Time and nature wear on -- entirely unsympathetic to the projects being wrought around them -- and yet, humans soldier on. Buildings burn down and collapse and then are rebuilt, better and safer and more magnificent than they have ever been. Planets become uninhabitable and humanity traipses off to find a new home. Someone looked back fondly through paintings and photographs and latched onto a beautiful part of Earth’s history and rebuilt it here, hundreds of years later and dozens upon dozens of lightyears away. Incredibly persistent creatures, humans. 

Of course, Time Lords can be persistent, too, but they lack the hope required to resist evil. Ambition sweeps away any and all concerns for morality and justice until there’s nothing left but an unquenchable thirst for power. She hates that about them, and she cannot help but recoil with disgust whenever she finds herself falling prey to those same instincts.    
  
It’s part of why she keeps so many people around. They remind her that she should always strive to be better than the purpose for which she had been forged. Life is more than war and glory. It’s love and hope and the dreams that bring light to dark places. If she repeats that mantra enough, then maybe she will start believing in it again. Maybe it will be strong enough to chase away the grief that threatens to push her closer and closer to the edge of darkness. Or maybe it won’t be enough. Maybe nothing will ever be strong or real or important enough to knit her broken hearts back together again.

“Are secret tunnels usually this …” There’s a pause as Yaz searches for the right word. “... _ Damp _ ?”   
  
The Doctor seizes on the subject of conversation with more exuberance than is called for. It’s a safe topic of discussion. It’s impersonal and tinged with a touch of adventure, and that is everything she could have wanted right now.    
  
“ _ Oh _ , loads! You have no idea how many people dig too close to the water table. I’ve spent ages picking my way through flooded tunnel networks. Takes so long for your socks to dry out after a day like that. Pretty sure I have a pair that’s still wet from chasing a hologram of a giraffe through some catacombs on Europa 3 a few dozen years back. You would not  _ believe _ what a disaster that was.”

Ryan reaches out a hand as he listens to the Doctor yammer on, tracing over the wet stonework with his fingers. “Do you think there are secret rooms in here? Secret doors and all that?” 

The Doctor’s shoulder lifts in a half-hearted imitation of a shrug. “Probably. Amazing how secretive a place can become if you never bother to map it.” 

An idea springs to mind as she digs her sonic out of the inside pocket of her coat, sweeping it over the walls around them. Despite operating primarily through soundwaves, she has never really considered building in an echolocation function, but it’s something that could be useful in situations like this. Green eyes dance across the readout before falling to the ground in disappointment. It’s not picking up anything interesting, just ambient noise from the technology built into this place’s DNA. Not very useful, all things considered. 

“No secret doors,” the Time Lord declares with great aplomb, turning her eyes towards the ceiling as a cold drop of water falls on her scalp and sends shivers ricocheting down her spine. She doesn’t really appreciate the atmosphere of this place. It is much too claustrophobic for her. It makes her feel trapped and slowly squeezes hope and life and vitality out of her. If the TARDIS had stuck around, she would’ve skipped town in an instant, before Graham even had a  _ chance _ to be kidnapped. “Shame really, could use a good secret door right about now.”

“Maybe we’ll see Graham at the show tonight,” Yaz offers, digging deep into her soul to summon up hope. “The Phantom did invite us, after all. He must have a reason.”   
  
Darkness falls across the Doctor’s face as a muscle in her jawline clenches. She is glad that they’re walking in a line, grateful that Yaz and Ryan can’t see the rage and fear that threaten to boil over. Even though they have told her time and time again that they hate it when she keeps secrets from them, she does her best to close off the more dangerous parts of her. Her demons are her own burden and no one else’s. “About that -- we shouldn’t go.”

“But what if there’s a clue?” Ryan says, taking his hand away from the wall and roughly shoving it into the pockets of his jacket. “Sometimes you need to play the game in order to win, right?”   
  
“If we play, I could lose, and I  _ don’t _ lose.” The Doctor growls the words through clenched teeth. “I can’t lose. There’s too much at stake.”    
  
“So then why aren’t you telling us stuff?” Ryan can’t keep the anger from creeping into his voice. “We can help, you know. Whatever you’re dealing with, we can handle it.”

Booted feet stop dead in their tracks. She turns with agonizingly deliberate slowness and steps towards Ryan, closing the distance between them and fixing that inexorable stare upon him. There’s something different about her, something that crackles dangerously around her, Ryan cannot help but feel a sinking chill of dread burn through him. He wonders if this is the side of the Doctor that monsters see before they die.

“Ryan Sinclair, I have known more horror than you will ever see. I’ve seen armies clash and planets die. I’ve watched the stars blow out one by one until there was no life left in the universe. I’ve taken lives and had my life ripped from me. I’ve suffered over and over again at the hands of those with evil in their hearts and power at their fingertips. If I keep something from you, it’s because the thing is more horrible than you could ever imagine.”

His tongue presses against the back of his teeth, ready to claim his worthiness and defend himself against her assumptions, but he thinks better of it. However, swallowing his words does nothing to dull the spines in his tone as he says, “Okay then. Have it your way.”   


Time passes in tense silence as they move deeper into the tunnels. The walls get tighter, the ground gets wetter, the air gets harder to breathe, and Yaz releases a sigh of relief as soon as the Doctor tells them to turn around.    
  
“No point going any further without more information. There’s gotta be a map of this place somewhere, or someone who’s been through it. All we have to do is find them.”   


The Doctor says it like the simplest thing in the world, but all Yaz can think of is how very large this building is, and how very small she feels when the Doctor isn’t on their side. 

Yaz nods, offering up a tiny smile that doesn’t dare to reach her eyes. “I’m sure we’ll find something. After all, there was a whole period before the Phantom started murdering people, right? You said that people used to come down here all the time.” She’s trying to build a bridge over the chasm that had opened up between the three of them.    


It’s hard to put her finger on what exactly has changed since the Kassavin tried to invade. The Doctor had come face-to-face with an old friend, or an old enemy, or whatever he was, but they had still won, hadn’t they? The Earth had been saved and evil had been banished. Logically, it shouldn’t be any different than any of the other times they had saved the world together, and yet, something had fractured between them. The Doctor is angrier, snappier, shorter, and Yaz doesn’t know how to fix it. 

They’re still retracing their steps when Yaz finds enough courage to speak her mind. “I think Ryan’s right. I think we should go to the show. If you don’t want to go, Doctor, then don’t go, but someone should. It might be important.”

“You two are not going in there alone.” Anger still simmers on the surface of the Doctor’s voice, glowing red in the dark of the tunnels.    
  
“Then you better come with us, yeah?”    
  
A noncommittal huff of air leaves the Doctor’s lungs, too tired to argue.    
  
“And you should probably open that parcel that was left for you.”   
  
The Time Lord bristles, shoulders hunching forward as she drags herself into a future that seems less and less appealing by the minute. “It’s not important. Said so on the note.”

“I may not be able to read your language, but I know a lie when I hear one.” 

“You open it then.” It is both a challenge and her last line of defense against two friends who seem intent on tearing her apart.    
  
“What if it’s dangerous for us?” Ryan says, springing to Yaz’s defense. “And not dangerous for you. You’re a Time Lord, right? Things gotta affect you differently than they affect us.”   
  
The Doctor shrinks into herself, wishing that she could slip away into another dimension, never to be seen again. She doesn’t like feeling attacked, and here she is, getting it from both sides. Does his job well, this Phantom. He’s already succeeded in sowing discord across the ranks. Soon enough, he’ll have what he wants, and she’ll be alone, staring him in the face, offering up every ounce of her precious attention in some desperate bid to return things to the way they ought to be. 

She can’t keep the bite out of her words as she speaks. “Then I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Shouldn’t be too hard. You're already blindly catering to the whims of a ghost, aren’t you?”


	4. Chapter 4

The plush carpet and ornate mirror of the dressing room mark a stark contrast to the damp and dreary tunnels that the trio had so recently vacated. Yaz had taken point in finding them a change of clothes and a place to stay that was out of the way of the opera house staff while they busy themselves with prepping for the night’s performance. A manager had found them an unused room and a trunk of castoffs, and promised to come and fetch them when the doors open and crowds begin to gather. 

The Doctor resents the inactivity, and has taken to draping herself across a chair in the corner, idly kicking her feet against the empty air and staring up at the elaborately painted ceiling. Seems a bit silly, going to all that effort of painting cupids and clouds and rays of light in a room that the general public never gets to see, but at least it gives her something to look at other than her companions. She can feel the distrust radiating from them in waves, and she doesn’t want to see the pain and the hurt in their eyes. 

“You gonna change?” Yaz asks, poking her head out from behind a wooden screen. Though she would be loathe to admit it, she enjoys any opportunity to don new clothes and ingratiate herself with the local culture. It’s fun to be someone else for a while, to imagine sweeping into an opera house on a weekly basis, ogling the gathered group through a pair of opera glasses and swapping gossip with whoever is at her side. Of course, Graham is still missing and the Doctor is still shoving her out instead of letting her in, but pretending is a good distraction. She’s quite proud of the ensemble that she has pieced together from the items in the trunk, all deep blues and flowered trim and a cute little hat that helps to hide the frizz that the humid tunnels had drawn out of her hair. 

“Nope.” The Doctor replies shortly, still staring intently at the ceiling. “I like my clothes just fine, thank you very much. Very comfortable. Lots of pockets.”   
  
Ryan pushes himself off of the wall that he has been leaning on, taking a red coat out of the trunk and unceremoniously throwing it into the Doctor’s lap. She flinches, but remains stubbornly unmoved. “Least you can do is try to blend in. For Graham. Unless you don’t care about your friends anymore.” 

A sigh drifts past her lips, heavy as a dying star. “I can’t help if you’re not going to listen.”    
  
“We can’t listen if you’re not going to say anything,” Ryan counters, crossing his arms over his chest. “Besides, you haven’t even opened that.” He tilts his head sideways, indicating the hotly contested parcel that had been tossed onto a side table.    
  
“We already went over this. I said that you could. Happy Yuletide. Or Ghastlidon. Or Veritmas. Or whatever it is that we’re  _ not _ celebrating.”    
  
“It’s  _ for you _ .” He feels his anger building as she continues to needle him, but he does his best to keep it out of his face and out of his tone. The last thing he needs is to alienate someone who they desperately need on their side, at least until they find Graham and recover the TARDIS and get out of here. After that, he has every intention of holding her to account for everything that she’s done and said to them lately. He doesn’t care if it means that he’ll have to leave traveling the universe behind; he just wants to feel  _ safe _ . 

The Time Lord swings her feet off of the arm of the chair, and puts her head in her hands, fighting off the ache that threatens to explode into a full out war behind her temples. Gallifrey had been razed to the ground, and ever since she set eyes upon it, she’s felt like she’s burning, too. Sparks fly whenever she opens her mouth, smoke rises and presses against bones and muscles until it threatens to tear her apart just to break free. She holds it back the best she can from them, but it will never be perfect. She’s strong, but she’s not that strong, and her persona has always been precarious. It was never going to last for very long. It was too perfect, too idealized, too much of a lie, and all it takes is the right person, with enough terrible tales about her history, to rip it away entirely, and that person never rests for very long. 

“ _ Fine _ .” Her accent wraps around the word, spinning it with scathing displeasure. “Give it here, then. But I’m not responsible for your disappointment.” She doesn’t know what exactly lies in the confines of the box, but she knows the sender well enough to know that it can’t be anything worthwhile. More likely than not, it’s something specifically designed to humiliate her, to lay her bare and put her at his mercy. He may not always play at being a Phantom, but he has always found a certain glee in knocking her off her high horse. 

The box finds her way into her hands -- she doesn’t bother looking up to see which of them had put it there -- and she gently pries the offending note free from the ribbon and shoves it into her pocket. She doesn’t care for the contents of it, but there is something deeply comforting in seeing the familiar strokes of the language that had defined so much of Time Lord history...and so much of her late wife’s wanton acts of graffiti across historical monuments. She wishes that this was as kind as those flirtatious cries for help, but words penned by this hand will never be.

Her hands shake ever so slightly as she unties the ribbon. Nerves flutter in her chest and dread sinks into her stomach with the same insistence that her teeth dig into her lower lip to keep it from trembling. She hates that he has gotten so far inside of her head that a box feels like an attack, hates that she has allowed him to have that power over her, hates that she cannot share this burden with her fam without further destabilizing their trust in her. To her, it feels like the more they know about her, about her decisions, about her history, the more likely they are to leave, and she’s not prepared to face that eventuality. Not yet. Not while the loss of her home and her people is still so fresh. Not while she feels more alone than she ever has before.

The Doctor frees the lid from the box and find herself looking at a pile of fabric, black and gray, cut with shimmering lightning. For a brief moment, she’s almost tempted to laugh, to turn to her companions and watch them come to terms with the fact that they had been foolish enough to assume that a box left by a killer might hold the key to their rescue, but she swallows back that particular cruelty. 

“Told you it was nothing, didn’t I?” she comments, raising her eyebrows and finally daring to look over at Yaz and Ryan. “It’s a game, and  _ we’re not playing _ .”

Yaz takes a tentative step forward, trailing her fingers over the gift. The color shifts slightly beneath her touch, like sunlight filtering through storm clouds. “Why would someone send this to you?”   
  
“Because some people like to toy with their prey before they kill it.” The Doctor sinks back into the chair, swinging her legs back over the side. “And I’m not interested in dying today, thanks.”   
  
“Doesn’t look like the sort of thing someone with death on their mind would send.” Ryan rocks back on his heels as he speaks, and the intensity of his thought scribes itself into stark lines across his forehead. He’s running through possibilities, filtering through each and every tiny, personal detail that the Doctor has ever told them about herself. It’s not much, but it’s at least  _ something _ to go on. 

“Who do you think knows the trap better, Ryan, the person the trap was made for, or the people who were caught it in by accident?” It’s quite snappish for a hypothetical question, and the Doctor catches herself in the act, turning her eyes back towards the ceiling as if that might somehow make it better. 

Yaz cuts in, answering on Ryan’s behalf. “We do. If it’s a trap designed for you, yeah, then the person knows you well enough to know what you will and won’t do. If he sent you something you won’t wear or asks you to do something you won’t do, then he’s counting on you not cooperating. But what if you did? What if you played along for just long enough to throw him off his game? That’s gotta give us an opening somewhere, and we’ve seen what you can do with even just a whisper of opportunity.” 

Silence settles over the room. 

Yaz is right, and the Doctor hates that Yaz is right. The Time Lord is not particularly interested in succumbing to the will of other people. Not Yaz’s will, not Ryan’s will, and certainly not the will of an opera ghost who has never had anyone’s best interests at heart aside from his own. She’s always had a stubborn streak, always been willing to lash out against authorities and institutions that feel unjust and unfair, and when her perspective is being molded and twisted by the weight of her own fear, even her friends’ earnest attempts to do the right thing feel needlessly cruel. 

Still she shakes off her anger as best as she can manage and stands, grabbing the box and retreating behind the changing screen.    
  
If they want her to play, then she’ll play. At least, she’ll play for as long as Yaz and Ryan remain within range. As soon she is on her own again, she’s rewriting the rules. 

  
  


\-----

  
  


“Stop messing with it,” Yaz chastises, taking the Doctor’s hand and pulling it away from the rhinestone that she’s been picking at for the last fifteen minutes. She can’t help but notice the unnatural chill that’s seeped into the Time Lord’s skin. The Doctor’s hand is cold and clammy, despite the valiant efforts of the twin heartbeats pulsing through her veins.   
  
The Doctor snatches her hand away and sinks lower into her assigned chair. She’s glad that the Phantom had at least given them box seats. It means that she doesn’t have to face the icy stares and murmured disapproval of others. It’s just her, Ryan, and Yaz, floating somewhere above the crowd that filters through the aisles below. “It’s uncomfortable. I’m allowed to be uncomfortable. I let you be uncomfortable.”

“It’s a dress, not a straightjacket,” Yaz hisses. “Besides, you look good.” 

It may not be the most magnificent gown here, but it’s enormously flattering. The black and grey of the fabric is almost blue in the light of the theater, like a storm gathering on the very edge of dusk. Metallic thread flashes whenever she breathes, like lightning cutting through clouds. The sleeves are dotted with tiny glittering stones, each one of them cut into the shape of a delicate raindrop. Yaz had insisted on pinning up her hair, twisting it into tiny curls and little braids that circle her head like a crown. When taken as a whole, the effect is stunning, even if the Doctor keeps her shoulders hunched and sinks into herself at every opportunity.    
  
Yaz had never thought to compare the Doctor to a storm before. To her, she had always shone like the sun -- drawing people into her gravity, bringing light to dark places, offering up warm, beaming grins even in moments when smiles are difficult to come by. However, that part of the Doctor has been buried beneath the insufferable mood that has hung over her for weeks. This Doctor, the Doctor that they’ve been dealing with recently, is a  _ thunderstorm _ , ready to break at any moment.

“I haven’t worn a dress in 500 years.”

“Neither have I,” Ryan offers up the joke in a valiant attempt to dissolve some of the tension, but it doesn’t land. Shrinking beneath the venomous side-eye of both Yaz and the Doctor, he crosses his arms over his chest, mumbling a vaguely dissatisfied and wholly unnecessary, “You try to do better.” 

“Look, we sit through the show, and if nothing happens, you get to change back into your clothes, right? Worst case, you’re stuck in this for another three hours. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.” Yaz says, turning her attention back to soothing the Doctor’s indignation. 

“Any amount of time spent in the correct order is insufferable.” She wants her TARDIS back, she wants Graham to be safe, and most importantly, she wants to stop being treated like a butterfly pinned beneath a bit of glass, subject to the discerning eye of a collector. 

Yaz snaps back, “You’re deliberately missing the point and I’m not going to let you manipulate me.”

The Doctor’s tongue clicks against the back of her teeth as she readies a retort, but she’s stopped by a single chord and the subsequent hush that settles over the audience. That’s fine. She can save her disapproval until intermission. Elbows rest on her knees as she leans forward, eyes flicking across the audience in search of familiar faces as she resigns herself to a long and arduous wait. 

It’s a shame. Under different circumstances, she would have probably enjoyed the show. The cast -- both organic and android -- is talented and enthusiastic. The music is catchy enough that the melodies worms its way into her ear and takes up residence in the tiny, repetitive part of her brain. The sets are so realistic that they seem to be plucked from the very era that they seek to recreate. To a willing audience, it no doubt creates an entirely immersive illusion. To an irritated Doctor, however, she cannot help but fixate on the little inconsistencies, the things that cast it back towards the uncanny valley.    


It is only when she’s begun to settle in, started to feel smugly confident that she was correct and that it wasn’t worth attending the show that things change.    
  
A ballet taps its way across the stage, dancers hitting their marks and spinning away again. The music taps along, jauntily punctuating the beat over and over again. And then a sharp blade taps a sandbag, sending a body tumbling from the rafters.    


The Doctor springs to her feet, rushing to the edge of the box and leaning over it, pressing her hands flat against the wood. Yaz and Ryan rise in turn, coming up to that same edge, fighting to comprehend the situation.    
  
The rope reaches its breaking point and draws tight, dangling the corpse on display for all to see. It’s close enough that the Doctor could touch it if she wanted to, close enough that she can make out the face of the very man who had greeted them upon their arrival, close enough that she can see his final pain etched into the lines of his face. It’s close enough to be a message, and to make it very, very clear who the intended recipient is.

The music grinds to an uneven halt and a horrified murmur sweeps over the crowd. 

The Doctor steps backward slowly, one hand rising to bury her shocked expression beneath a closed fist. She almost trips over the hem of her gown as a familiar mind takes advantage of the confusion. A single word seeps through the cracks in her mental wall as he makes contact.   
  
_ Kisses _ .


	5. Chapter 5

Yaz and Ryan rush to the railing together, leaning out over the edge as they attempt to absorb the scene.

It is far from the first time that they have witnessed death in the Doctor’s company — such things have become a regular occurrence, especially lately — but that regularity makes the suddenness of the strike no less shocking.

Yaz scrutinizes the body with a detective’s eyes, looking for clues, stringing them together the same way she would while working her job back home. Not for the first time, she wishes that she carried a notebook and a pen on hand during her adventures with the Doctor. Trouble might be solved bit quicker if they all compared notes and made connections between them, but of course, they never anticipate running into trouble in the first place. Trouble’s just something that always seems to find them — tracking the Doctor like a second shadow. She used to think that it was just bad luck, and that the Doctor must be an incredible person for weathering these storms and still managing to be kind, but doubt has begun to sink in.

Sometimes, it seems like trouble happens _because of_ the Doctor.

She shakes away the thought before it has time to properly take root. No matter what observations Ryan might make, this is not the time to dwell on her feelings for the Doctor — not on love, not on worry, and not on doubt. There’s a phantom afoot, a man has died, and nothing is less important than whether or not it is possible to fancy someone that you don’t entirely _trust_.

Yaz stands on tiptoe and cranes her neck upward, squinting her eyes at the place in the rafters from which the poor fellow has been suspended.

In the darkness that lurks just beyond the glittering chandeliers, Yaz glimpses the faintest flicker of movement. The culprit, maybe, lingering at the scene of the crime just long enough to gaze upon the fallout of his actions without risking discovery. If she knew how to get up there, she would race away in an instant, but she knows that by the time she finds a way up, he’ll be long gone.

Later, she’ll make sure to ask around for a map of the place, or find a guide that would be willing to show them the way. Maybe Meg will be willing to help if they ask, but for now, Yaz has to settle for what they can discover down here.

“He was dead before he was thrown,” Ryan observes from beside her.

Yaz’s brow contracts with confusion as she glances between the corpse and her friend — not because he’s wrong, but because based on her own second look at the body, he’s _right_. For a moment, she’s tempted to ask him where he picked up that kind of knowledge, but she also knows that the answer probably circles back to a story mechanic in a video game that he likes. Those things have gotten incredibly detailed since the days when she used to borrow a friend’s Game Boy at lunch and try to jump hurdles and duck below missiles. She and Ryan have tried to play a couple games together during the periods when the Doctor leaves them at home — things with guns and cars and bright, flashing colors — and without fail, Ryan _always_ beats her.

“Seems a bit inefficient to lug a dead body up there only to drop it,” she comments. For a moment, her mind flashes back to the way that Graham had been taken — how easy it might be to zap someone up there — but she chooses not to share the thought. Ryan’s already worried. She doesn’t want to make it worse by tying Graham to the dead guy in front of them.

Ryan, too, turns his eyes upward to stare at the ceiling. “Maybe he died up there. Don’t have to move him if you already have a plan.”

“Probably wouldn’t be hard to lure him up there either. I mean, the Phantom convinced us to come here. Sent us tickets and everything. It would be nothing at all to break a light and send a call down for some last minute maintenance.”

“Or he could’ve thought he was meeting someone in secret. Bet there’s loads of covert things that happen in a place like this. Affairs, money laundering, covert dealings. Maybe that’s how the Phantom got all this power in the first place before he started murdering. Maybe he’s got blackmail on everybody.”

Despite the seriousness of their situation, Yaz can’t help but release a single, quiet snort of laughter. “You’re starting to sound like a spy again.”

Ryan’s lips tighten into a small smile as his eyes alight on her face, “Logan is on the case.” 

But the brief respite from fear falls away as the crowd below them grows quieter and quieter. As the last stragglers finish fleeing from the scene and ushers corral a couple people who were too shocked to move, Yaz and Ryan become increasingly aware that they have been left completely alone with a corpse and a rope and the grim reality that they are trapped in Space France with a murderer who knows their names and sent the Doctor both a dress and a note in her own language.

“Doctor, do you think —“ Yaz starts, turning around to seek out their surprisingly silent friend. But the Doctor has disappeared, leaving nothing but empty space, closed doors, and velvet curtains in her wake. Disappointment rises in Yaz’s chest and spreads across her tongue. Under different circumstances, she might have been worried that the Doctor, too, had been taken, but her disappearance had been too quiet to be the result of nefarious intervention.

There’s one explanation and one explanation only, and that is that once again, the Doctor abandoned them in order to run off on her own.

And as much as she might like to be, Yaz can’t find it in herself to be surprised.

Almost as suddenly as it had entered her mind, the psychic contact retreats, leaving only fear and emptiness behind.

The beating of the Doctor’s hearts fills both her chest and her mind — flailing at a breakneck speed as the temperature of her body steadily rises, reaching a boiling point. She needs to get out of here. She needs to stop staring at the body of the manager and thinking about how easy it would be to save him if she just had her TARDIS, and how he probably wouldn’t have died at all if the failing ship had dropped them anywhere else but here. She needs to find the Master.

Her feet shift against the carpet as she pivots, and without thinking — without feeling — she slips behind the curtains and out the door.

People run past her — screaming and talking and running and streaming in the direction of the stairs and the lobby that lies beyond.

“Better get out quick, miss.” A man says as he passes, lifting his top hat and inclining it in her direction.

For a moment, the Doctor’s racing thoughts snag on the title and her nose wrinkles. She thinks that she likes _miss_ even less than she likes _madam_ , but her mind doesn’t have time to linger. She has to find him, has to talk to him, has to find a way to keep anymore harm from being done in this place.

She begins to work against the current, side-stepping worried girls and muttering couples and one fellow who cannot seem to stop laughing.

She doesn’t know where she’s going; it just feels important to go _somewhere_.

She reaches out her mind, blindly searching for his touch in the dark.

She can’t manage to reach far enough.

With a growl of frustration, she ducks out of the flow of traffic and leans against the wooden wall. The moulding digs into her back, but it is cool and firm and out of the way, and under the current circumstances, that’s enough to constitute momentary sanctuary.

She begins a series of exercises that she learned back at the Academy designed to quiet her hearts and clear her head. It’s one of the few lessons that she held onto in the intervening centuries, and it’s usually useless, but she’s desperate and fearful enough to try it anyway.

 _Everything will be fine_ , she silently repeats on a loop, lips ever-so-slightly mouthing the words. _Everything will be fine. You’ve made it out of worse situations before. It will work out. It always does._

It’s the same lie that she has told to her companions for years. They have never believed her, and in this moment, she doesn’t blame them. She doesn’t believe herself either.

It is only when the crowd thins that she is finally able to find any semblance of stability — fragile though it is — and she closes her eyes and reaches out again, stretching out a little bit further this time.

A sigh of relief tumbles through her as her mind finally brushes up against another.

The Master feels familiar, as he always does, and he toys with her for a moment before letting her inside — teasing her, taunting her, relishing in her attention.

 _Contact_.

 _Contact_.

“What are you doing here?” the Doctor spits across the telepathic bridge that has been forged between them. It’s a question born of fear and vitriol and the smoldering ashes of betrayal, and it _burns_.

“I expected a warmer greeting, Doctor. I did send you a gift.” The Master’s tone is bright. Cheerful, even. Completely unaffected by the dead body swinging from the rafters.

Once, the Doctor expected more from him. Now, however, she expects absolutely _nothing_ , and in return, he serves her nothing but pain and hurt and resentment.

“What did you do with Graham?” she asks, turning her mind towards the person she can still save and away from the dead man that she can’t.

“He’s fine. We had a tea party. Delightful company, your pets.” The Master doesn’t even attempt to hide the lie, and he delivers it with the same relish with which he bandies everything from gleeful death announcements to sweeping condemnations of their people.

“ _Where is he?_ ” the Doctor repeats. She leans into the question — pointed, insistent.

“He’s fine. I haven’t hurt him. _Yet_.” The yet is an afterthought, tacked on in case she needs an additional threat to keep her compliant, but the joke’s on him. She may be in the dress he sent, she may have accepted those tickets, but she does not intend to play this little game that he’s set up for them. She is not his pawn to be thrown about wherever and whenever he pleases.

Some of her thoughts bleed through the connection, and she bites her tongue and focuses her mind to hold back the majority of them.

However, the leak is still enough to spark a glimmer of amusement within the Master’s hearts, and he allows her to feel it, too. 

Shame and rage grind her teeth and tighten her hands into fists at her side.

“What do you want?” the Doctor asks after a long pause. She doesn’t want to hear the answer, doesn’t want to give up anymore ground than she already has, but she has a duty to save Graham. He didn’t ask to be here. None of them did. They are collateral damage.

Her friends are _always_ collateral damage.

“I want you to meet me,” the Master says as though it is the most obvious thing in the world.

“Where?”

“Where do you think?” They’re the Doctor’s words, not his, twisted up and tossed back at her so casually that she almost misses the mockery.

The Doctor sends him a thought of the damp and dirty tunnels that run beneath this Opera House, the ones that bore little fruit earlier in the day and have never been mapped.

The Master refines the impression slightly, orienting her towards a hidden door that she and the sonic had overlooked entirely, and then withdraws from the contact.

The Doctor opens her eyes and stares out at the now empty hallway.

She ought to tell Yaz and Ryan where she’s going, but they’d insist on coming along, and she can’t let them fall into the Master's orbit for a second time. He’d kill them without a second thought, and she would be left to contend with the guilt of it all by herself. _Again_.

They’re already angry at her anyway. Surely it won’t get worse in the interim.

She takes one final glance in the direction of the box from which she had fled, gathers up the shimmering fabric of her skirt — cursing once again the fact that Ryan and Yaz had pressured her into wearing the dress —and takes off in the direction of the tunnels.


End file.
